


It's a Ghost Story (baby just say yes)

by moontyrant



Series: Bucky Barnes: Professional Ghost Botherer [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, BAMF JARVIS, Bucky Barnes Feels, Canon Disabled Character, Fluff, M/M, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Paranormal, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Supernatural Elements, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 13:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5291798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moontyrant/pseuds/moontyrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are an infinity of universes in potentia. In one, Bucky Barnes was born in the early twentieth century, followed Steve Rogers into a crusade against Hydra, was captured and became the Winter Soldier. In another universe, Bucky Barnes was born in the 1980s and grew up to spend his weekends busting ghosts. </p>
<p>“And this guy is legit?” Clint asked for the third time, eyebrows making a break for his hairline.<br/>Tony threw his hands in the air. “How should I know! He has some reviews online but it’s not like he has a website or anything.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Ghost Story (baby just say yes)

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this one comes from a Taylor Swift song. I am not proud.
> 
> Most of the "Latin" in this fic was taken from a Discworld Wiki on "Latatian." Whatever wasn't is taken from Google Translate. You can visit the end notes to see what the hell Bucky is shouting, but it's not really relevant to the plot. It's just fun.
> 
> Please do not try these methods at home if you have a spirit infestation.

As if dealing with evil space sorcerers, alien invaders, megalomaniacal scientists and Acting Director Hill’s forcing the Avengers to use Org Sync were not bad enough, the Avengers awoke to find Stark Tower haunted.

The morning started as most morning do, with Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, waking up hours before the rest of his team to get in a brisk morning run. He padded to the bathroom to do a perfunctory washing up only to catch a shadow in his mirror. He blinked. He checked his six. There was no one in the bathroom, and the door was safely closed behind him, but he couldn’t help but say, “Hello? Is someone here?”

Of course, being alone, no one answered him. He shook his head, splashed some water on his face and pulled on a hoodie. Four slices of toast and a tall glass of orange juice later he laced his running shoes and had to pause. Something lurked in the corner of his eye. “Hello?” He turned slowly; people did not break into Stark Tower, and they certainly did not break into one of the uppermost floors without JARVIS’ knowing. Speaking of, “JARVIS, is someone here?”

No answer.

Steve stalked through his apartment, checking under tables and in cupboards only to confirm what he knew: no one was there. And that included JARVIS. Which was worrying. He picked up his cellphone to ring Tony—maybe his AI was down for maintenance?—but, to his chagrin, his phone didn’t have any signal. Which was another thing that didn’t happen at Stark Tower. He glanced over his apartment and felt the creeping of something horrible, a feeling of the familiar suddenly made strange as if the Earth had tipped about two degrees off its axis in the night. Cold stole along his arms, down his legs, and he could feel himself slipping into hypervigilance, ready to fight because things Were Not Adding Up.

The frantic pounding at his door made him jump.

Natasha, as per usual was all business. “We have a situation, Rogers.” Uh-oh, using his last name; that could only mean serious trouble. Beside her Clint gave a terse nod, fingers twitching, probably wishing for a bow or a decent throwing knife and having neither of them on his person.

Natasha and Clint collected him and they would have ridden the elevator down to the communal floor if the damn thing were working and if red slime were not creeping down the stainless steel surface. “Gross,” both the spies grunted as they passed it and headed straight for the emergency stairs. Steve scurried to keep up.

 

“Haunted,” Tony groaned into his putrid green drink. A single light in the kitchen ceiling flickered and buzzed and Steve had the surreal sense come over him again. The communal kitchen was a warm place with warm lighting. Someone, probably Pepper, picked out a peachy-orangey-yellow for the walls, crème tiles for the floor and backsplash with ample light fixtures throughout the ceiling. For some reason a rooster adorned the cookie jar on the end of the counter. It was a small thing, barely a detail worth thinking about, but Steve found his eye drawn to the cookie jar; had the rooster always looked so…sinister? The kitchen was home to all the Avengers, but even with them hunched around the little table the room seemed alien somehow, the light too bright but still unable to penetrate the shadows in the corners—shadows that Steve was certain hadn’t been there the day before.

The lightbulb over Tony’s head buzzed. “JARVIS isn’t answering anyone,” Bruce confirmed. He looked calm, but after a dozen missions Steve could make out the tightness in his mouth, the way his shoulders hunched in his oversized gray sweater.

In the living room, a drawer ground open. “Pepper?” Tony called, holding his putrid drink a little closer to his chest. The drawer slammed shut.

Natasha shook her head. “Pepper’s in Hong Kong this week,” she reminded him in a tense undertone. “And Thor’s offworld.”

The Avengers exchanged looks. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Bruce murmured.

“Like that my fucking house is fucking haunted?” Tony growled. The cookie jar slipped off the counter and shattered on the floor, sending a spray of jagged pottery and Oreos across the crème tile. “That’s it! I’m making some calls!”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Yeah? Who ya gonna call?”

 

Bucky Barnes had opinions about people that summoned him at ass o’ clock. Of course, for him ass o’clock fell anywhere between 4 am and noon, so he couldn’t be very vocal about those opinions. Sue him. Or don’t. Between his crippling student loan debt and the dollar store ramen stocked in his cupboard, he didn’t have much to give. He cussed a blue streak while he groped in the dark for his phone and even managed to grab it and put it to his ear before it quit ringing. “Barnes,” he grunted. He rubbed an eye and frowned. “Slow down, sir. Are you calling for a quote, or for a spirit extermination.” He screwed his eyes shut while he listened. “Okay, I hear you. I need you to remain calm. Are you hurt? Is anyone you’re with hurt? That’s good. I’m sorry about the Oreos. Where did you say you are?” He sat up, losing all the heat he had accumulated in the night. “This isn’t a crank call, is it?” The madman on the other end spluttered, but fortunately a woman with her head on straight took the phone and answered with military precision. “I see,” he said. “Let me check my schedule.” He made thoughtful noises while he pulled on a pair of socks and hunted for his boots. “Ah, seems I can just squeak you in. I’m glad you called when you did. I’ll be there in an hour; we can talk payment when I get there.”

 

“And this guy is legit?” Clint asked for the third time, eyebrows making a break for his hairline.

Tony threw his hands in the air. “How should I know! He has some reviews online but it’s not like he has a website or anything.”

Steve half listened to his teammates bicker while he poured six sugar packets into the watery breakroom coffee. Fortunately, the ghost or poltergeist or whatever hadn’t migrated below the Avengers’ living quarters. Stark Industries ran as it always did, unconcerned. Of course, getting down this far had been something of a trial; the elevators were unresponsive to Tony’s frantic button stabbing, and most of the doors leading to the stairs were stuck fast, locked where no locks had been installed. Finally Steve had had enough and kicked an emergency door clean off its hinges.

He sipped his tepid coffee and wondered if it would be in poor taste to go on his run after all and leave the whole haunting business with his team. He wouldn’t actually do that, of course, but he still wondered.

 

Bucky Barnes did not go in much for fancy. His grimoire was a three ring binder leftover from his college days, battered and beaten but always carefully repaired. In one of her whimsical moments, his sister and written “Don’t Panic” in large friendly letters, with an aside in ballpoint along the bottom, “I have duct tape.” Bucky, as a reminder to never take his craft too seriously, slipped his sister’s handiwork into the clear plastic sleeve on the front of his grimoire and liked to look at it from time to time.

He did have duct tape. He had a lot of weird shit in his work bag. A brief inventory included: a small first aid kit, a one-way valve CPR mask, two canisters of black salt, a canister of salt salt, a tarot deck, a Bicycle deck, a glow-in-the-dark Ouija board, a small cast iron frying pan, half a dozen white tea lights, a 99 cent lighter, sleigh bells, a 2 GB flash drive from his technomancy phase he hadn’t the heart to repurpose yet, paint swatches he kept meaning to put in his grimoir and kept forgetting about, a handful of shiny rocks he pretended were crystals, a handful of actual crystals, bundles of sage, a jar of white vinegar with some orange rinds disintegrating in the bottom, a bundle of sticks held together by an improbable length of twine, a small container of googly eyes, a chunk of chalk, and two flasks. He fished around for flask number one until he found it. He unscrewed the top and took a sip. The label said _Field Medicine_ in sharpie, but his tongue said _Everclear_ in burning. Sinuses cleared, he screwed the top back on and dropped it back in his work bag as the bus squeaked to a halt.

“No time like the present,” he muttered to himself, and stepped out into the brave new day.

 

“That must be him,” Steve said from his armchair in the lobby. His team volunteered him for this bit; they lurked about the lobby, all of them wearing comms. Really, Steve was the natural choice for this part. He had the coolest head today aside from Natasha, who practically had to sit on both Clint and Bruce to keep them from vibrating out of their skins. The guy walked into the lobby like he wasn’t sure he was in the right place, and he seemed so out of place anyway it could only be Barnes.

Nothing about him screamed spirit exterminator. He wore nondescript black boots, a pair of faded jeans and a black jacket over a black button up shirt. His longish brown hair had been pulled into a hasty ponytail at the base of his skull and he carried a bulging rucksack over one shoulder. But he also walked like he had somewhere to go, right up until Steve intercepted him.

“Bucky Barnes?”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” he grunted. “I’m here for a paranormal cleanup?” His mouth quirked at the end, as if asking himself how this had become his life. The half-smile seemed to leak into his eyes, making them softer in a way.

_Oh no._ “I, uh, that is. Yes.” _Smooth, Rogers._  

A full smile graced his face now. Up close Steve could see stubble darkening his jaw, and the fullness of his lips, and how his lashes were long enough to cast shadows on his cheeks. _Oh no._ “Lead the way, Mister…”

“Steve.”

The smile remained in place and the rest of Barnes’ face froze. “Steve.” As quickly as it happened his features regained animation as he followed Steve through the lobby and into an elevator. “And you can call me Bucky.”

Instead of answering like a normal human Steve emitted some kind of high pitched chuckle, drawing a concerned _What the hell?_ from his earpiece. The space in the elevator was entirely too small with just the two of them, but luckily Barnes, Bucky, was all business. “What’s the situation, Steve?”

His ears burned. Bucky seemed to roll the name around in his mouth, as if he thought it was a fake name. And it was possible that in his running gear Steve could pass as not-Captain America, but there was no way Bucky didn’t recognize him at point blank range, in the lobby of what the press called Avengers Tower, when he gave his very real first name. “The situation? The situation. It’s, yes, we’re haunted.”

Bucky nodded, impassive enough that Steve could at least pretend he wasn’t laughing at him on the inside. “What’s going on? How do you know you’re being haunted?”

And Steve sketched out the details of that morning: red goo creeping down walls, a sense of not being alone when he was clearly alone, strange shadows, things moving that shouldn’t be moving, lights flickering. Bucky nodded, coolly professional as Steve rambled. “Any cold spots? Weird smells? A history of violence?” Steve answered no to all of them as the elevator slowed and came to a stop. Between floors. “I take it this is about where the residential floors begin?”

Steve gave a nervous nod. What if they were stuck in here? He shook that thought away. He was Captain Goddamn America. He pushed his fingers between the elevator doors and, as soon as he could get purchase, heaved. And pulled. And pulled some more. The doors, apparently unimpressed by the entirety of his super soldier strength, remained quite stolidly closed. Ears burning, he glanced over his shoulder at Bucky.

Who was leaning against the back of the elevator and rummaging through his rucksack. “Lemme try something.” Steve did not expect him to come up with a small cast iron skillet and a stick with sleigh bells tied to it. The two met with a clatter that had Steve pressing his hands over his ears. Bucky banged them together repeatedly and shouted some kind of Latin incantation. “Fabricati diem, punc!” he shouted. “Dico, dico, dico! Excretus ex fortuna, tu es! Memento mori, memento quintus nowember, memento veni vidi vici!” Satisfied, he settled back against the wall of the elevator and gestured for Steve to try again. This time the elevator doors parted with only the token resistance of elevator doors everywhere, revealing the floor of the communal living area and the ceiling of the Stark Industries administrative services center.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Steve marveled. “ _Yeah, me neither_ ,” Natasha sniggered in his ear.

“Believe it,” Bucky preened, stuffing both pan and bells back into his sack.

“What did all that mumbo jumbo mean?”

This time a blush crept up Bucky’s neck and colored his cheeks. He coughed. “Ancient Latin spell, the true meanings of which are lost to the sands of time.” Natasha released an unholy gale of laughter over the comms, and Steve could hear Clint and Tony asking what was so funy.

Steve scrambled up onto the communal floor and reached back to help Bucky up as well. For one horrifying moment, he imagined Bucky reaching up for him and the elevator sliding down, or the doors slamming shut on their joined hands. But that didn’t happen. Bucky safely clambered up onto the carpet beside Steve and gave a low whistle as the hairs along his arms stood on end.

“Man, this place is jackered.”

“Jackered?” Steve echoed.

“That’s the technical term.” Bucky poked a finger at the sticky red goop.

“I wouldn’t…never mind.”

“Gross.” Bucky rubbed his index finger and thumb together, frowning at the red residue there. “Huh.”

“What is it?”

“Fuck if I know.” Bucky took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and rubbed his hand clean. “Any idea how the spooky spirit got in here?”

“No. I woke up this morning and everything was just…different.”

Banish, cleanse and protect. Prayers and hope were nice, but Bucky preferred the simplicity of making noise, cleaning everything and putting up the wards. He took a wooden spoon from the kitchen and handed off the sleigh bells to Steve. “Okay, step one is we make the place as annoying to inhabit as possible.”

Steve looked at the bells with something akin to despondency. “Are you sure?”

“Eeyup. Just follow my lead.” He lit a bundle of sage and handed it off to Steve before they got started, letting the fragrant smoke sear hazy trails in the air.

They made quite a pair, with Bucky banging away on his skillet and Steve solemnly jingling behind him, yelling, “Dico, dico, dico! Excretus ex fortuna, tu es!” Hopefully Steve Fucking Rogers wouldn’t think to look up what he was actually saying. Then again, what did Bucky care? He was going to get rid of the spook, get his money and get the hell out of dodge. They paraded through the communal floor, Bucky keeping his eyes peeled for any of that Final Destination bullshit the more exuberant spirits liked to pull. That was a lesson you only have to learn once. 

With everything on that floor quiet, save for the two of them, they returned to the kitchen. A quick raid of the pantry turned up an unopened box of baking soda. Bucky dumped the whole thing in a mixing bowl, added a generous helping of black salt and mixed the thing with his trusty wooden spoon. “What’s this?”

He tried not to look at Captain America. The man was so earnest and polite it was hard to maintain eye contact. It was like trying to outstare the sun. He had been nervous and jumpy at the start—most clients tended to be—but the yelling burnt off the excess energy. “It’s carpet cleaner. Mind breaking out the vacuum and a broom?”

They paraded through the tiled area, Bucky sprinkling the cleaner and Steve politely following around with a broom. “This is the cleansing part,” Bucky explained as they went. “Whatever spooky nasty is floating around is not going to like it, which means if it’s even still here this floor is going to be pretty much uninhabitable.”

“I see.”

Bucky paused his ministrations and rubbed the back of his neck, forcing his gaze up to the good Captain’s. “Look, I know it doesn’t look like much. But it works. There’s not a lot of sparkle to it, and it’s not glamorous, but it works.”

Steve contemplated him for a long moment, head tipped and eyebrow raised. “Are you a religious man, Mr. Barnes?”

Bucky snorted. “Look, I wouldn’t use the term religious to describe me. Nothing in this world makes sense, and humans are the only apes dumb enough to try to make sense of it at all. I don’t believe in gods, and I don’t subscribe to any legitimate dogma. But I do look at the clouds to see if I can see shapes, and I skip through every song on my iPod until I get to the one I wanted all along, and I still get surprised during the first snowfall of the season. Not because I’m special, but because I’m human. That’s what I believe in, Cap. I don’t give one hot damn for what’s profane or sacred, just what’s human.”

He didn’t know if that satisfied Steve’s question or not. He went back to work, sure that Steve was quietly judging him and giving his turned back a very patriotic stare down. Whatever.

“I don’t know if I believe in God anymore.”

His voice was so quiet Bucky almost missed it. Almost. He paused and turned back. “I’m sorry.”

How did Captain America’s sad puppy face never make it into the history books? “Nothing makes sense in this century. Nothing’s made sense since I woke up.” He frowned at the fine dusting of grubby white across the carpeting. “Do you think magic is real?”

Bucky tugged at the chain around his neck so that his mother’s wedding ring he kept hidden under his shirt was in view. “Do you see this? This is a magic ring; if I were to give this to a woman she would become my wife.” Steve’s brow knitted, bewildered. Bucky tucked the ring back under his shirt and rolled up his right sleeve. “This rainbow bracelet has the power to incite outrage and horror anywhere middle-aged, white conservatives are gathered, and also at family get-togethers.” He reached in his pockets, and was glad to see that Steve was trying not to laugh now. “This phone? Pure magic. I can instantly send messages or speak to any other human on this planet in real time. I have an app that tells the future, provided I only need to know what the weather looks like for the week. A Google search of classical literature opens up a world of necromancy, all available at my fingertips. With the right know-how, I could conjure a goddam pizza inside thirty minutes or less. So, basically, yeah. Magic doesn’t get any realer than this, Steve.”

Steve nodded. “I like your bracelet.”

“Thanks.”

They worked in silence, sprinkling, sweeping, vacuuming. Bucky made a floor wash with some of his white vinegar, a tincture from flask number two (labelled _Holy Water: Homemade_ in sharpie) and a splash of orange Spic n’ Span from under the bathroom sink. He let Steve do the mopping while he moved on to Phase Three. Bucky drew warding sigils in holy water on doorways and major windows. That done, he added his pièce de résistance: a pretty rock from his rucksack with a pair of googly eyes glued to it.

“A pet rock.” Steve stared at it where it sat on the dining room table. It stared back.

“A guardian rock,” Bucky countered. “Guess what its name is.”

Steve gave him a long look. “Rocky?”

“Shit, that’s way better than what I was gonna call it.”

“Wait, what were you going to call it?”

“Nope, doesn’t matter. It’s a Rocky now. Guardian rocks live on good vibes, so make sure it gets a daily dose, twice a day if you can swing it. And to clean it just roll it around in a bowl of salt every Sunday.”

“How do you feed it good vibes?” Steve asked, afraid of the answer but curious anyway.

Bucky shrugged. “I tell mine puns.”

“Puns!”

“Or you could just leave it in a room where there’s a lot of laughter going on. That works too.”

Steve nodded slowly; if he got his own guardian rock it was going to starve. Wait, what was he even thinking? _It’s a rock, Rogers._  

Rinse and repeat. They went upstairs and burned sage while yelling and clanging. They cleaned the floors, Steve doing the mopping up while Bucky finished with drawing warding sigils on important windows and doorways. Another rock with googly eyes went on the mantle, this one named Maynard.

“No, you cannot name a perfectly innocent rock Maynard,” Steve scolded, grinning in spite of himself.

“I think I just did, Rogers. Wanna fight about it? Put up yer dukes!”

“No, you jerk!”

“Fine, punk. You can name the next one.”

And so on and so on. By the fourth floor Steve’s normally inexhaustible energy flagged enough for Bucky to notice. “Let’s take a break,” he called over his shoulder as he drew the last sigil on the last window.

Steve nodded and flopped down on the freshly vacuumed carpet. “I kinda wish Tony didn’t build so many residential floors,” he groused, and immediately felt like a heel. He didn’t know much about Bucky Barnes, but he did see his phone: an off brand smartphone, one step up from a flip phone. And the man’s clothing didn’t want for wear; his shirt had the shabby black look of a well-loved garment that had gone through the wash at least a hundred times. All of the materials they had used so far had either been hastily scavenged from the Tower or, in most cases, looked as if it had been picked out of the trash and bullied into usefulness. The pieces of the puzzle, when fit together, made up a picture of a somewhat desperate existence. Bucky Barnes, with his full lips and long lashes, didn’t have much money, and here was Steve bitching that his barely-friend built too many floors on his skyscraper for the Avengers to live in.

Not that Bucky saw Steve’s flinch. He dropped onto the carpet beside Steve with a sigh. “We’re lucky it’s only the residential floors,” he reminded Steve with a nudge of an elbow. “Can you imagine if it were the whole building?”

Steve shuddered. “Knock on wood.”

Bucky snorted and made a half-hearted slap at his rucksack. “I got some sticks in there somewhere. Good enough.”

“Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do you have sticks in there?”

“Never know when you need a good willow switch.”

Steve stared up at the popcorn ceiling, letting the coolness of the floor sink through his shirt. “How long have you been ghost busting?”

“For money? About, gosh, about a year now. My first gig was when I was sixteen, though. My stupid sister got to dabbling in things she didn’t understand and she wound up summoning she didn’t know how to banish. Man, if you think having normal roommates are bad, you should try living with a pissed off spirit. I do not recommend it.”

“You have a sister?”

Bucky rolled over and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He plucked a weathered photo from his billfold and handed it to Steve. “Becca.” He propped himself up on his elbows, the lines of his face soft. “After our parents passed she moved to the city so we could be orphans together.”

“My condolences.” The young woman in the picture had hope in her eyes and mischief in her smile. She looked quite a lot like Bucky, but with all the hard edges softened. Something told Steve she didn’t spend her weekends in other people’s haunted homes to squeak by. He wondered how much extra ghost hunting Bucky did to make sure she didn’t have to squeak by at all.

Bucky waved a hand. “It is what it is. I’d love to say she moved out here so I could support her, but I’ve only ever been treading water myself. But at least we tread water together, y’know?”

Steve handed the picture back. “What’s she do now?”

“She’s a student up at NYU. She wanted to be a paranormal investigator, but I was like ‘Beck, c’mon, can’t you use your brains for something useful?’ So she’s double majoring in chemical engineering and photography. When she isn’t chasing Bigfoot she just blows me away with how damn smart she is. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still my stupid little sister. She will always be my stupid little sister, but she’s brilliant as hell.” Bucky peeled himself off the floor and rolled his shoulders, painfully aware of how sappy and proud he sounded, and also how much he dominated the conversation. “Anyways, we should probably get back to it.”

Banish, cleanse, protect. Rinse and repeat. Bucky emptied a canister of black salt by the fifth floor and they needed to scrounge for more baking soda along the way. “Did you ever go to school?” Steve asked, holding the dustpan as Bucky swept the kitchen floor of Bruce Banner’s barely lived in apartment.

“Oh, yeah. Some. Got a Bachelor’s degree that I use for a coaster. Nothing fancy.”

“Yeah? What did you study?” Steve decided he would never get used to the idea of higher education going unused. Who the hell wouldn’t hire Bucky the minute they talked to him _and_ knew he had a degree?

Bucky frowned as he swept up a particularly recalcitrant dust bunny. “Uh, foreign languages and history education.”

“Oh.” Steve didn’t really know what to do with either of those.

“Yeah. Shit, if I knew then what I know now, I woulda skipped university and gone to trade school. I could’ve become a plumber or something. Get a decent salary, have a house, feed Becca on the regular. It would be nice.”

“You honestly think you’d be happy being a plumber?”

Bucky shrugged. “Eating three square meals a day in a place where the roaches don’t fight back sounds like happiness to me.” And didn’t that sound like the dream? In his youth, Steve would have killed to have that kind of life. Hell, he did kill for a better life—sure, he fought for freedom and some other ideals that got hazy when the sky was choked with smoke and fire swallowed entire swaths of the European countryside—but at the end of the day the military offered him rations and a bedroll and a purpose. “What about you?” Bucky tacked on, dragging him from his reverie. “Ever think about going back to school?”

Steve smirked and shook his head. “I get called on missions so often it wouldn’t even be worth it.”

“Ever think about doing something else with your life?”

“Like what?”

“Shit man, I dunno. You could be a hot air balloon pilot.”

He blinked. “A what?”

“You could be an underwater basket weaver. Or a beekeeper. You’re Captain Goddamn America. You could do anything you want.”

“I could chase Bigfoot,” Steve deadpanned.

Bucky snorted. “Hey, as long as you don’t bring my sister with you. Do not encourage her.”

Banish, cleanse, protect. Steve had been dreading the next floor and for good reason. “Aw, Steve, don’t tell me you live here.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

Bucky shook his head, taking in the apartment in its entirety. “For one, all your walls are white.”

“So?”

“White walls are for hospitals, prisons and dorms. Are you really going to tell me Stark is such a hardass landlord he won’t let you paint?”

“Well, no. But there’s really no point. Like I said, I go on missions so often it doesn’t really make sense to…” His protest died in his throat at Bucky’s flat look.

“No pictures, no posters, no plants, no clocks, no TV. Steve, you’re breakin’ my heart.”

“There’s a clock on the microwave.”

Bucky plodded into the kitchen, hands on his hips. “The time is wrong.” A strangely blank expression crossed his face. “You really just use this floor to keep your stuff and sleep, don’t you.” He scowled and spoke before Steve could answer. “Unacceptable.” He shrugged off his rucksack and pushed it into Steve’s hands. “You are going to dig through here for some paint swatches and then you are going to pick a damn color, and next week we are painting at least one wall in this apartment that color. Friends don’t let friends live with all white walls.” Bucky turned and stomped off, slapping his skillet with the sleigh bells.

He didn’t hear when Steve looked down at the rucksack and murmured, “I guess we’re friends then?”

Bucky walked through the apartment, making a racket and menacing any lurking spirits with what he was sure was butchered Latin, trying not to feel annoyed the more he saw of Steve’s home life. He made his bed with military precision and didn’t leave dirty dishes in the sink. There were no decorative rugs, or interesting conversation pieces, or takeout menus stuck to the fridge. At least Clint (the Actual Real Hawkeye What the Hell) kept a nudy calendar in his room. But it might be the Black Widow’s (he wasn’t ready to think of her as Natasha). The point was that even the sparsest apartment, Bruce Banner’s, had evidence of his living there: a rolled up yoga mat in the corner of the living room, a peace lily by the window, a scattering of scientific journals and data printouts on the coffee table. Steve didn’t _have_ a coffee table. 

He returned to the kitchen area to find that Steve had, in fact, picked out a color and something else too. “What’s this for?” Steve asked, trying to be all innocent but there was an edge of suspicion to his voice.

Bucky eyed the crappy plastic 2GB flash drive in his hand. Of course, that would look weird as hell; get pretty much unlimited access to Stark Tower, where both Stark Industries and the Avengers were seated, and bring along a data storage device. Steve had been with him the whole time, but there was still something unsettling about a stranger wandering around with a memory stick in a powder keg of technological secrets. “It’s technomancy. You can look at it if you want.”

Steve blinked, apparently not expecting that answer. “What’s on it?”

“Um, basically me trying to learn HTML, some SPSS files Becca never got around to deleting, a few documents about pretty much what we’re doing right now, except in the digital world. It’s pretty par for the course.”

Steve turned the flash drive over in his fingers for a moment, as if thinking about crushing it in his fist ( _Please don’t_ , Bucky grumbled internally, _those things cost money and I could still use that_ ). Then he handed it back to Bucky with a sigh. “Sorry, I’m not usually suspicious. I do trust you.”

He dropped it in his hip pocket. “You live with spies and Tony Stark. I think you’re allowed to be a little suspicious.” Steve’s apologetic smile was like staring at the sun as it peeks around a wisp of cloud. _I do trust you_ echoed in Bucky’s head as they laid down the powder and got to vacuuming, sweeping and mopping. _I do trust you._ But fucking why? Bucky was a nobody with a collection of superstitions that just so happened to meet Steve’s needs today. _I do trust you._ He didn’t even bother to look what was on the memory stick. For all he knew Bucky was lying his ass off. _I do trust you._ He paused by the kitchen island, touched the paint swatch where Steve had marked the right color with a little X in ballpoint pen. He picked out blue, because of course he did. It wasn’t a bad shade of blue, just shy of oversaturated, the kind of blue that would be overwhelming if it weren’t so calm, like the winter sky on a clear, cold day.

Blue was good for bedrooms, wasn’t it? Blue for sweet dreams and easy awakenings. Bucky turned on the vacuum cleaner and ran it along the living room floor and broad sweeps. A blue bedroom, he thought to himself. And a nudy calendar for good measure. _I do trust you._ Bad choice, Captain. He left a pretty blue rock with googly eyes on the kitchen counter by the microwave. “What’re you gonna name it, Cap?”

“Sarah,” Steve replied before the question was fully asked, like he had been thinking about what to name his own rock all along. Bucky opened his mouth to ask why, but thought better of it.

“Sarah it is.”

Tony’s penthouse was huge and a giant pain in the ass. While the other Avengers ranged from slovenly (Clint) to varying degrees of Spartan, Tony’s living space was lavish. And very…chrome. With glass accents. And red and gold as an afterthought. “What the fuck,” Bucky muttered more than once, with Steve humming agreement pretty much every time.

“Steve. Steve. Is it just me or is this just sorta what a poor person would think of as a rich person’s suite? Why is there a pool table in the bathroom? Steve.”

Of course, Steve had been stifling snickers the entire time. “Believe it or not, he’s much calmer now that he has Miss Potts in his life.”

“It would be a strange world if we were all the same. Especially if we were all the same as Tony Stark,” Bucky deadpanned.

“Oh yes. Then we would all have slightly smaller bedrooms inside our bedrooms,” Steve deadpanned back.

“Yo dawg, I heard you like sleeping. So I put a bedroom in your bedroom, so you could sleep while you sleep.” And then neither of them could keep a straight face any more and they dissolved into the giggles peculiar to small boys of all ages who have been traipsing where they don’t belong and aren’t sorry. And for a moment they were just two poor Brooklyn boys, having a laugh at someone with more wealth than either of them could imagine.

“How mad would Tony be if we named his rock Justin Hammer?”

“Who the hell is Justin Hammer?”

“Oh man, don’t get Tony started on Justin Hammer.”

“Steve, seriously, who is Justin Hammer?”

“I wish I could bottle your innocence.”

“You’re killin’ me, man. Anyone tell you you’re a troll?” Bucky grinned and shook his head as he finished the last protecting sigil and tossed his flask to Steve to stow in his work bag.

“What’s this flask labelled ‘Field Medicine’?”

“Nosy nosy,” Bucky tutted without heat. “Take a sip and find out.” Steve did take a sip, only to nearly spit it out.

He coughed, eyes watering. “Did you just let me drink rubbing alcohol?”

Bucky threw his head back and cackled. “That is a wonderful invention called Everclear. I have a lot of fond not-memories thanks to Everclear.” And he was feeling good, good enough to throw a chummy arm across Steve’s huge shoulders as they swept out of the penthouse. “I’m gonna show you the future, Stevie,” he declared, the pet name tripping off his tongue without a second thought, as if he had known Steve his entire life. “Memes, Pure Romance parties, gun control protests, the whole shebang.” When he looked up at Steve’s face, his grin was still fucking blinding, all bright and indulgent and soft around the edges.

“Sure thing, Buck,” he said. “Sure thing.”

 

And the haunted tower was haunted no more. The lights no longer flickered. Shadows no longer clung to where shadows oughtn’t to be. As the sun hung low in the sky, the Avengers settled back into their home to find themselves, thankfully, alone when in solitude. As per Bucky’s policy, Stark paid him in cash, with a tip for his speedy work even though he made Steve help. And Bucky pocketed the money, shouldered his rucksack, waved them goodbye and made his way to the bus stop.

That is how it ends. A clean, neat ending with Bucky climbing up into the bus that would take him back to Brooklyn, to his shoebox apartment full of ramen and roaches, where the walls might have been white but they were also, thankfully, hidden behind posters and his sister’s framed photos and various verb conjugations leftover from his college days. Bucky leaned back in his bus seat and watched the buildings roll by. He always found this kind of work exhausting, not necessarily physically, but mentally and spiritually. He did not doze, but he let his thoughts roam with no particular destination in mind. His hand rested by his hip pocket and he touched the square shape of the crappy flash drive through the rough denim.

A stupid mistake, leaving it in his work bag as he wandered through Tony Fucking Stark’s house. He needed to be more careful, more cognizant. And that Steve Rogers, with his big blue eyes that seemed sad even when he laughed and his short yellow hair and his pink lips, that Steve Rogers said he liked Bucky’s rainbow bracelet and he was gentle with Becca’s picture. His smile was summer but there was winter in his eyes, some part of him under the earnest exterior that never managed to thaw. Bucky didn’t give a damn about Stark Tower, but people like Steve Rogers shouldn’t be haunted. Not by ghosts, or worry, or tax collectors. No, people like Steve Rogers needed someone in their corner from time to time. Someone who didn’t wear a black cat suit or robot armor.

Bucky worried at the plastic flash drive in his pocket. Now, what kind of ghost/spirit haunts six floors of a building at once? He let his eyes fall shut. What kind of ghost/spirit that could haunt six floors at once, stopped at six floors? What was it trying to accomplish? Or communicate?

The city rolled by, gray in the time before true sundown and the streetlamps come on. What kind of spirit targets the Avengers specifically? And how? The tower was new enough there shouldn’t be any gruesome murders that could have happened there without his hearing about it, and it wasn’t like Stark found an ancient Indian burial ground and decided to plop his skyscraper on it. Of course, spirits could always be invited in, like in a séance gone wrong or if some fool misused a Ouija board. Then again, the Avengers didn’t strike him as the spiritual type.

He scratched at his nose. Should he take technomancy back up? He didn’t really give it a fair shake the first time around. What should he have for dinner?

He froze, heart stopping in his chest for a moment. Then he shot out of the seat. “Stop the bus!”

 

“Kid does good work,” Tony noted. “Look, he even vacuumed.”

Steve flopped on the couch of the communal living room, taking care not to jostle Bruce. “Yes, we vacuumed, Tony.”

“Well, if ghost busting doesn’t pan out he could always be a cleaning lady.”

Steve frowned up at the ceiling. “Tony?”

“Yeah Cap?”

“This might come as a shock to you, but believe it or not Bucky Barnes has endured struggles you couldn’t even fathom with disadvantages you were lucky enough to escape. And I have no doubt that if his small business doesn’t work out he could apply his skills to something a bit more lucrative than janitorial work.”

“Wow, you two really bonded,” Tony sniggered, as always completely immune to Steve’s carefully controlled tone.

But that was to be expected. “Yeah, we had a good laugh at your bathroom pool table.”

“I don’t know why you guys are all so down on my pool table.”

“’Cause it’s in your bathroom!” Clint barked from the kitchen. Natasha shushed him as she looked at her phone, a takeout menu in hand.

“I’m still not getting cell service,” she complained, holding her phone out at arm’s length.

Tony took out his own phone and frowned. “Something’s up with the tower in this area, I swear. Whatever, doesn’t matter. JARVIS!” They all politely waited for the ceiling to answer. Tony cleared his throat. “Hey JARVIS! JARVIS? You there buddy?”

No answer.

 

Bucky sprinted like a bat out of hell, his work bag jangling on his back. “I fucked up!” he moaned. “I fucked up!” After an eternity of playing real life Frogger, taking back alley shortcuts and running until his heart was about to pop he finally slid into the Stark Tower entrance. He sucked in a few steadying breaths, smoothed back his hair and strode in. _Be cool, Barnes._ “Excuse me?” he said at the receptionist’s desk. “Hi, my name is Bucky and I was with Steve earlier? Steve Rogers? And I think I left my wallet up at his place? Do you mind if I just go on up?”

She gave him the flattest, coldest look he had ever seen on another human. “I’m afraid that is quite impossible,” she sniffed.

He was going to flip her desk over. He was going to completely lose his shit, right here, right now. He sucked in another steadying breath and gave her his best charming smile. “Sorry. Would you mind calling him for me? I really need my wallet—it has my bus pass. Can’t leave without it.”

She stared at him with dead eyes. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

“JARVIS buddy?” Tony tried again.

“Maybe his speakers aren’t working?” Bruce suggested, but even to his own ears it sounded weak. Because that Wrong feeling was stealing over them all. Clint’s head whipped to the side, as if he caught sight of something in his peripheral vision that wasn’t really there.

“It didn’t work,” Natasha said flatly.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “But we did everything! All the residential floors. Even Thor’s.”

 

“He’s not answering his phone,” the receptionist said, glaring at Bucky like it was his fault. Okay, it probably was his fault, but she had no way of knowing that.

“Aw, nuts.” He propped his hip against her desk. “So when do you get off?”

 “I’m a lesbian, you twit.” She wasn’t looking at him anymore, instead once again invested in a stack of some kind of auditing she no doubt needed to finish before the end of her shift.

“Yeah? Tell me more.”

Her mouth actually fell open, because that was probably the least expected thing she expected to hear out of him. “You know what? Just go. Go see Steve Rogers. I don’t care anymore.”

He grinned and dropped a wink her way. “Have a good one, Susan.”

He grinned and swaggered all the way into the elevator, and only stabbed the button for the communal Avengers area thirty-two times before the doors finally closed.

 

“I don’t know what we did wrong!” Steve wailed. And then the lights went out.

In the dim light afforded by the gray twilight filtering in through the windows, Bruce shifted on the couch, shoulders hunching toward his ears. “I have a very bad feeling about this.”

The elevator rattled and ground to a halt, and they all looked up in confusion at the closed doors. Someone on the other side cussed a blue streak in what might have been butchered Latin before forcibly prying the doors open.

“Bucky?”

“Steve! Steve, I done fucked up!” he cried. Steve ran to the doors and pushed them the rest of the way open before reaching through the gap where the elevator had stopped, caught between two floors.

“Gimme your hand.”

Bucky reached up just as the elevator rattled. “Bucky? Bucky!” And then he had to snatch his arm back as the elevator sank again the way it had come.

“Steve! I’m sorry!” Bucky shouted as his friend disappeared from sight. “I’ll make it right!”

And then he was left alone in the tiny elevator with the walls closing in. Bucky forced himself to breathe. Okay, he could do this. He fished through his rucksack and unearthed his glow-in-the-dark Ouija board, laid it across his knees and got to work.

 

“Steve, he’s just gone downstairs,” Natasha snapped, the last of her patience beginning to evaporate.

“Yes,” he said slowly, and lumbered to his feet, shoulders bowed. “In an elevator that shouldn’t move when the doors aren’t closed. It shouldn’t move at all if we don’t have power up here. He’s just gone downstairs,” he said, voice hollow.

Tony appeared at his elbow, reaching out a cautious hand but not daring to touch him. “Steve? Come on, talk to me.”

“Why would it want to take him downstairs, Tony? What’s down there?”

He shrugged. “Cubicles. Offices. Garage.” The penny dropped.

“And your suits. The building is haunted, the elevator has a mind of its own, JARVIS is nowhere and a civilian IS HEADED FOR YOUR WORKSHOP FULL OF IRONMAN SUITS!” Steve tore for the kitchen, grabbing the salt shaker, a metal bowl and a wooden spoon.

“Won’t you need your shield?” Clint demanded as Steve bounded for the elevator shaft.

“Fuck that!” he snarled indistinctly, clenching the spoon between his teeth before leaping into the empty black shaft.

The other four heroes watched him go. “You know, sometimes I really hate that guy,” Clint sighed before getting a good handhold on the rope and dropping down after him.

“Yeah, okay, well scientists are going to use the stairs like normal people,” Tony called as Natasha followed Clint.

 

Bucky’s heart galloped in his chest and his head hurt, but he thought he had a decent idea of what was going on. The spirit wasn’t exactly chatty, but it begrudgingly dropped informational tidbits, like a cat that want to be petted but won’t let you pick it up. He had seen angry spirits, grieving spirits, spiteful spirits and the occasional playful spirit, but this one almost seemed lonely. Hungry. Like it was starved for something Bucky wasn’t so sure he could provide. He blew a stray strand of hair out of his face and cracked his knuckles. The elevator clunked to a stop. The doors slid open.

This must be Ironman’s workshop, he reasoned. Windowless, lots of metal everywhere, big helper bots “sleeping” in the shadows, and half a dozen Ironman suits waiting inert behind a glass partition. Bucky stepped inside and the doors behind him slid shut without a sound. “You think I’m afraid of you?” he quavered into the dark. A single fluorescent light above buzzed to life, which only served to highlight the darkness. “Well, I’ll have you know I am scared! I’m fucking terrified.” Another light buzzed to life, and he followed to where the spirit wanted him to go.

The Phantom of the Opera had a big ass organ. Tony Stark had a big ass computer screen, the kind that puts up additional holographic displays. And the screen flickered on, revealing a pair of round glasses on a face only a mother could love. “James Buchanan Barnes. Age twenty-five.” And that was just too much. He dropped like a sack of potatoes in a dead faint. The computer looked down on him dispassionately. “A pity. I hoped to give you something to think on before you died.”

 

There are about a thousand ways to get to an altered state of consciousness. In his college days Bucky experimented with trance from meditation, mind altering substances, and white noise. Fainting could also get him into an altered state of consciousness, apparently. Bucky stirred without his body moving, and blinked up into a world of darkness punctuated by twinkling lights. “Stars?” he rasped.

“I’m afraid not,” a genteel if harried British voice answered. One shape against the backdrop of darkness was somehow darker, its edges composed of infinite void instead of a mere absence of light.

“Who are you?”

“JARVIS, sir,” it answered without turning around, though how Bucky would know if it turned around was anyone’s guess. “I am an Artificial Intelligence of Tony Stark’s design.”

“Where am I?”

“W-w-w-workshop, under Stark Tower,” JARVIS guttered. “Your body is, anyway. You mind is in the Space Between.”

“Liminal space,” Bucky reiterated, feeling as if he were gingerly patting along a darkened wall for a light switch. “I’m between what and what?”

“Between-between-between,” JARVIS shuddered, hunching over a display of winking lights and sinking darknesses. “I do not understand the question. This is the Space Between.” Bucky stared up at the indistinct shape of the AI. Liminal space, a metaphorical crossroads, he thought. A dangerous place to linger—ask any pedestrian who paused in the middle of a busy intersection at the wrong moment.

Bucky picked himself off the floor that wasn’t really there and crept closer, wishing he could see what the AI was doing. Whatever it was took an awful lot of moving, shuffling, and thinking—he could hear JARVIS’ brain whir, like the fan of an overheated computer. “Can I help?” he asked softly.

“I’m afraid not, sir. There’s something in my systems, it seems. And it wants to kill us.”

“That’s not good,” Bucky murmured, and looked around the expanse of blinking, twinkling lights.

“I can’t find it!” JARVIS despaired, the whirring noise about his non-person stuttering. The edges of pure void blurred, and for a moment Bucky could see tiny stars poking through before it solidified again. “I am losing electronic integrity at an alarming rate. A bomb strike is coming, and if I cannot-cannot-cannot-cannot jam the s-s-s-signal, New York City is lost!”

Bucky turned away and stared at the expanse on twinkling lights. “Is it that one?”

“What one?”

“The one labelled Org Sync?”

If an AI could produce an embarrassed silence, this one did. “What makes you think the issue is Org Sync?”

Bucky shrugged. “We had Org Sync for our clubs at college. And it sucks. It’s the actual worst thing. Also, this seems like a relatively new issue and Org Sync is the shiniest thing here. So there’s that.”

JARVIS didn’t have a face, but if he did he would be eyeing Bucky incredulously. “Has it occurred to you that you are standing in my brain?” JARVIS asked conversationally as he plucked the tiny Org Sync icon from the air and brought it to the appendage Bucky wanted to call his head.

“Gross.”

 

He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. Oh, but he fell down hard and his body rushed to tell him so. He pushed himself up and staggered for the big ass console, seeing for a moment stars that resolved into Tony Stark’s gloomily lit workshop.

“You think you’re so clever,” he gritted out at the screen’s bespectacled face. “You caused your issues upstairs. You made a distraction so you could have your way down here. You had us fooled.”

“Correct,” the annoying thing answered.

Bucky glared. “You’re only half ghost. But you’re mostly a virus and you got invited in on Org Sync. Couldn’t you just get in through Google Chrome like everyone else?”

It sniggered down at him. “A virus, you say? No, I am Swiss. I was once human as you are human, but I was able to download my brain onto the glorious, emerging internet where I waited.”

“But you’re not waiting anymore.” Behind him he heard a thump, and he hoped it was Steve, please let it be Steve.

“The time for Hydra is at its peak. I will destroy Captain America and the rest of his precious Avengers and begin a new era. Hail Hydra!”

“You’re a dead man. What do you care?!” Bucky snarled.

“The answer is fascinating, but unfortunately you will be too dead to hear it.” Bucky glanced up in time to see one of the Ironman suits stir. Light flashed in its bionic eyes and it turned its face to look at him.

Bucky’s nostrils flared and he nearly fumbled the flash drive before slamming it into the appropriate USB port. “Fabricati diem, motherfucker!” he shouted into the ghost’s face and rolled just as the repulsor fire tore through Tony Stark’s workshop.

The rest happened in a blur. There were lasers and flying suits and tables zinging through the air, there was the ghost screaming, there was Steve, wild-eyed and frightened with the Avengers behind him, and if Bucky closed his eyes he could see stars with a figure pouring over them, swiping away the ghost’s handiwork and trying to get the situation under control as a missile hit orbit and soundly _did not_ hurtle for the sprawling metropolis of New York.

Banish, cleanse, protect.

Rinse and repeat.

 

Bucky opened his eyes to a white popcorn ceiling. He would have sat upright at once, but his body wasn’t taking orders from his brain apparently. Everything hurt. His entire body was a study in suck, from his hair follicles to his nailbeds.

What the hell?

“Help!” he shouted, or at least he would have shouted if his throat allowed anything beyond a kitten mewl. “Help! Please!” The Black Widow appeared in the doorway and made her way inside on soundless feet. “I’m sorry,” he warbled. “I was stupid. I’m sorry.”

Her face was a perfect blank. “Sorry for what?”

“I was wrong. The problem was in the basement. Something’s coming. JARVIS—“

“JARVIS is fine. There might could been a missile strike, but there wasn’t. We’re safe.” She sounded so certain, but she wasn’t there.

“Steve?”

“Some bruising and a cut on his forehead, but he’s fine.”

“Fine,” Bucky croaked. “Fine! It’s my fault he got hurt in the first place!”

Her mouth thinned. She crouched lower to the ground until they were eyelevel. “I need you to listen to me very carefully, James Barnes. Yesterday we all woke up to an obvious haunting and Tony called the first person in the area his eyes fell on. The only reason you were here at all was because your last name begins with a B instead of some tardier letter in the alphabet. We called you and you worked all day to make our home safe. And then you left and you caught our mistake—ours, not yours—and you came back to put it right. We should have done more investigating ourselves instead of just throwing our hands in the air and leaving it to the professional. You came back, and because you did you saved millions of lives, including mine. Including Steve’s. You saved the Avengers and JARVIS and all of New York, and you put yourself at incredible risk to do so, you stupid, brave, ridiculous man. And you lost something along the way.”

Yes, that had been niggling at the back of his mind and started jumping up and down to grab his attention. “Damn, that flash drive still had some storage space left on it.”

Natasha blinked. He got the distinct impression that she was not used to being caught off guard. “No, James. You lost an arm.”

They waited for that to register. It didn’t. “What do you mean?” he barked and looked over. Oops. “Aw. Aw. Ahw!” he wailed. “I need that!” There was barely a stump under the shoulder, all wrapped in crisp white cotton. “I can’t bust ghosts with one arm!” Tears pricked his eyes. “What am I gonna do, Miss Black Widow?”

She gripped his jaw and gently forced his face away from the stump and back to her. “James, I don’t usually say this, but I’m going to say it now: It’s going to be okay.”

“I stock shelves overnight at the warehouse,” he gibbered, tears making the Black Widow’s face swim. “I missed work and I’m already on thin ice. What’s Bobby gonna do when he has a one-armed stocker on the payroll?”

She made soothing sounds while he gabbled and the shock settled over him. “It’s going to be okay,” she repeated over and over until Bucky finally settled down, numbness stealing over him. “Let’s count our blessings, shall we?”

“Blessings,” he echoed dully.

“Your student loan debt is gone.”

He blinked. “Since fucking when? It’s not like I kept it in my left hand.”

“Since Tony Stark felt guilty about his robots trying to kill you,” she replied coolly. “So since early this morning. Let’s see, and Rebecca Barnes just got a full ride scholarship, courtesy of the Tony Stark bankroll. There’s also talk of a lovely new prosthetic for you, all Stark Tech.”

“Stark is really goddamn guilty, isn’t he.”

“He’s a billionaire. Let him have a conscience. Mm, oh! You’re moving into a bigger apartment at the end of the month.”

Bucky wilted into the starched hospital sheets. “Just how guilty is this man?”

“Oh, this is on Steve Rogers, and Clint come to think of it. You’ll be staying with Steve until you get the hang of your prosthetic and then you can have Clint’s floor.”

“In the tower?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I can pay the rent.”

“Well, since rent is minimal and you can have your pick of jobs that won’t be an issue.”

“My pick of _what_?”

“A few of the SHIELD higher ups heard about what you did. And it’s amazing what doors a degree in foreign languages can open. Of course, you could also go back to spirit extermination if you wanted. Lots of choices.”  She straightened up and made for the door, but paused on the threshold. “I heard your sister has an interest in paranormal investigation?”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

“Interesting. SHIELD will ensure she has her pick of jobs as well once she graduates. Get well soon, James. Or, as you would say, fabricati diem, punc.”

 

Bucky typically had a pretty good time sense, but the meds and the changeless room messed with him. A blink would turn out to be four hours of napping and every time he opened his eyes there was a new nurse in his room. So he couldn’t be sure how much time passed before Steve Rogers peeked into his room sheepishly.

“Hey soldier.”

Bucky hummed and forced his eyes to stay open. “Hey yourself. Are you okay?”

Steve had brought a bouquet of red flowers in a chintzy vase, which he set on Bucky’s side table. The one on the left—probably because there was no danger of him flailing around in the night and knocking it over. “Bucky, I’m fine. What about you?”

Bucky tore his eyes away from the red flowers only to get a load of the saddest mug he had ever seen. Of course America’s sweetheart would feel guilty about saving Bucky’s life if he couldn’t save both of his arms, too. What a punk. “Wanna hear a knock-knock joke?” he asked, his tone bright and glassy.

“I guess?”

“Okay, you start.”

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

Steve scowled. “You are such a jerk!” he cried over Bucky’s medicated giggling.

“Well you’re a cutie,” Bucky countered, because he really was when he laughed. His eyes creased and color crept into his cheeks and he was lovely.

Steve rubbed at the back of his neck. “Not as cute as you,” he said. It would have been better if he chuckled when he said it, or rolled his eyes, or put a sarcastic emphasis here and there. But it came out earnest, and Steve’s eyes were sad again, with that layer underneath that had never managed to thaw all the way. He said it like a confession, like he was sorry, and even Bucky’s morphine addled brain registered the sudden shift in atmosphere.

“It’s okay, Stevie,” he told him.

Steve hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Generally you put your face on my face. I can work out the finer details for the both of us.”

That startled another laugh out of him, and then Steve was leaning in and pressing a tentative kiss to Bucky’s mouth.

 

There was a debriefing in his hospital room. His stump hurt, but not as bad as the prickling of phantom pains that radiated from fingers and wrist and forearm he no longer had. It hurt but he wanted to be relatively sharp for this, which meant a moratorium on morphine until either the pain became unbearable or the meeting was over.

The ghost he helped JARVIS flush out of the tower had a name: Arnim Zola. It wouldn’t be back in Stark Tower any time soon, but he hadn’t killed it. No, Zola still floated around on the internet, probably in cahoots with fucking Org Sync. There were documents to skim and sign. Bucky clumsily drew his signature with his right hand, promising not to sue Stark Industries, not to blab about what happened on that fateful night, and so on.

If Phil Coulson were a color he would be beige, all careful wording with no meaningful facial expressions. “Saving your life was a risky proposition,” he said, sitting in a gray seat. Bucky watched him muzzily and waited for more. “We were able to get you stabilized with an experimental medical serum.”

“Is it made from aliens?” Bucky demanded before he could stop himself. “Because that sounds like SHIELD.”

“It’s not made from aliens,” Coulson assured him. “It is meant to regenerate cells and promote dendritic elasticity. It’s long term effects in humans are not well known, which is why you’re going to have a team of specialists to record your progress.”

Bucky frowned. “Who the fuck am I?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, who the fuck am I? Why did I get this alien serum when any other slob would have just got a pine box?”

Coulson blinked. “You think we’re trying to take advantage of you.”

“I couldn’t say no at the time, and I can’t say no now. So, yeah. Pretty much.”

“Do you know what SHIELD’s protocol is when we lose an Avenger?”

“Cry?”

“Well, yes, but besides that. We try our damnedest to keep them around, and that means innovations in the medical field. You got the treatment you did because you were treated in a SHIELD facility where this treatment was available, though still in its experimental phase. And you got the treatment because Natasha Romanoff asked nicely. Mr. Barnes, not only have you saved the Avengers once, but the fact that you’re still breathing means that the data our doctors collect from you could save them again in the future.”

He stared down at the stiff blankets. “Miss Black Widow really asked nicely on my behalf?”

“She asked nicely for her. Bottom line: if you turn green or, I don’t know, carve hieroglyphs into the walls let someone know about it. Realistically, the serum should disappear from your system in the next few days, and you’ll be the same as you always have been. But it’s important to know the value of thoroughness. Does that make sense?”

 

Becca ribbed him practically nonstop when she appeared in his room with a balloon and a Beanie Baby. “I turn my back for five minutes and you get an arm blown cleeeeeeean off,” she tutted, plopping into the gray chair. She ruffled his greasy hair.

He smirked. “And I met someone at the same time. So suck on them apples.”

“Who? Some poor nurse who doesn’t even realize you’re terrible?”

“Something like that. His name’s Steve.”

She scowled at him. “Steve? James, you are so full of shit you squelch. _Steve_. Yeah, uh-huh. I’m sure there’s a more generic name you could have said.”

“Isn’t that what you used to call Curt when you told your friends about him? You’d call him Steve so they didn’t know you were stepping out with a lowlife.”

She swatted at his unbandaged arm. “I called him ‘Steve’ so no one knew I was dating a coworker.”

“Lowlife.”

“So how did you meet ‘Steve’?” she asked, curling finger quotes in the air.

“Oh, you know.” Bucky lifted his stump in what he hoped looked like a dramatic way. “The ole razzle dazzle.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Believe it.”

 

Becca and Steve were his most faithful visitors, and it was only a matter of time before they were in his room at the same time. Becca was not amused with Bucky, though she was her usual charming, exuberant self with Steve. It wasn’t long at all before Bucky walked out of the SHIELD medical facility, his jacket sleeve pinned up and out of the way.

There was therapy, which several SHIELD agents assured him was in no way optional. And there was physical therapy. There was a prosthetic he needed to wear to get used to them before Tony and Bruce (Steve called them by their first names so often that Bucky started thinking of them by their first names) could fit him for The Prosthetic.

“We’re calling it the Weapon,” Tony grinned, waggling his fingers.

“We are not calling it that,” Bruce called from the back of the workshop, head bent over a couple paper readouts.

“Fine. We’re calling it the Asset.”

“No we’re not.”

There were doctor’s appointments where they tested his blood pressure, his glucose, his weight, his everything. There were nightmares and late nights and times with Steve rubbing circles into his back while he focused on breathing. But there were also early morning waffles, kisses hello and kisses goodbye, long walks and longer talks.

And that is how the story ends—with a dozen other beginnings. It ends with the beginning of love, the beginning of the Cold Feet War, the beginning of a series of culinary experiments. It ends when Clint takes Bucky out to the shooting range and they start talking about getting Bucky a license. It ends with Bucky finally asking Tony who the hell Justin Hammer is (and don’t get him started on Justin Hammer). It ends with the beginning of public speculation on the dark haired, surly-faced man (“I have resting bitch face, so sue me. Or don’t.”) who follows the other Avengers on errands across the city, and later shows up in far-flung corners of the globe with an attaché of SHIELD agents and the local dialect on his tongue. Is he an Avenger? A friend? An agent?

Bucky’s metal hand shoos the boom speaker out of his face as the other customers in the deli look on the tableau: the paparazzi versus Steve Rogers and Friend. “I’m a ghost story,” he said, exasperated. “Steve, don’t laugh at me, help!”

**Author's Note:**

> "Fabricati diem, punc!”- Make my day, punk! (sometimes "Serve and Protect")  
> “Dico, dico, dico!"- I say, I say, I say!  
> "Excretus ex fortuna, tu es!"- You are shit outta luck!  
> "Memento mori, memento quintus nowember, memento veni vidi vici!"- Remember you will die, remember the fifth of November, remember I came, I saw, I conquered!
> 
> The artwork on the front of Bucky's grimoire is a nod to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My own sister created the original artwork I described, though I have no idea what happened to it. 
> 
> Anyone who has ever used Org Sync has told me about how much they hate it. My roommate was telling me all about how much he hated it while I was writing this. 
> 
> Originally I intended a rando ghost to be floating around the residential floors and be banished no problem, but then I thought to myself "What if I made my characters suffer?" So of course I had to blow Bucky's arm cleeeeeeean off. 
> 
> Never hesitate to gimme kudos or comments. You can also send me hatemail via [my tumblr here](http://moontyrant.tumblr.com/).


End file.
